


Dead Man on My Sofa

by Kateydidit



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Bit of Johnlock if you squint, F/M, Gen, Hiatus, In which I am kind of awful to Mary Morstan, POV First Person, POV Molly Hooper, Post-Reichenbach, Present Tense, Sherlock is a selfish bastard sometimes, all my love for Molly Hooper, also I think he just says things to be mysterious, also in which Molly stands up for herself for once
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-06
Updated: 2013-02-06
Packaged: 2017-11-28 09:51:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/673066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kateydidit/pseuds/Kateydidit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Technically, Molly Hooper killed Sherlock Holmes. But that doesn’t mean that he’s going to leave her alone. Molly's point of view post-Reichenbach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead Man on My Sofa

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to write this as a short one-day fic last November. It ended up taking over my mind for several days.  
> Also, I'm bad at titles. Whoops. If you have any better suggestions, leave them... wherever you leave things here, I'm still figuring this out. Alternately, in my askbox over at tumblr. Same username.  
> Many many thanks, as always, to Lex for the eternal Skype reviewing. If this is any good, it's because of her.  
> Un-Britpick'd; any remaining errors are, as always, my own.

“What do you need?” I ask him, because even now, even seeing the way he looks at John, I would give him anything. There are some things - some people - you just don’t get over.

He steps closer, until I have to look up to see his face. “You,” he tells me, expression intense.

Twenty minutes later, I’m faking the paperwork that says Sherlock Holmes is dead. I guess that’s just the way these things go.

My name is Molly Hooper, and I killed Sherlock Holmes.

 

“You know,” I say lightly, “If I had known there would be a dead man sitting on my couch, I might have stayed in bed.”

He looks at me from his seat, eyes still rimmed in red. I politely pretend not to notice.

“I mean,” I add, as I start making coffee, “It’s not like I’m not used to corpses, of course, but normally they don’t show up at my flat, covered in fake blood and staining the upholstery.”

He blinks. “I needed… I mean,” he stops, swallows back his words until they become a question. “May I use your shower?”

I look at him carefully and nod. He disappears down the hall and I hear the bathroom door click shut behind him.

I leave him a pair of clothes that belonged to an old boyfriend. I can’t remember which one; they never last long. Either way, they’ll be too short in the ankles and sleeves, but he’ll have to make do. Then I slip back into the kitchen to wait.

He returns within the half hour, sitting down at the counter with damp curls dripping into his eyes. He’s got a spot of red still staining his scalp, along his forehead.  A few months ago, a freshly-showered Sherlock Holmes in my flat would have left me mute. Now, though, it mostly just makes me sad.

He doesn’t belong here.

I push a mug of coffee across the counter to him. He wraps his hands around it, saying nothing.

“So…” I start, a bit hesitantly. “What now?”

He’s quiet for a moment, the ticking of the kitchen clock the only sound in the room.

“Now,” he murmurs, “I hide.”

 

I let him stay here, of course. He can’t really go anywhere else. I leave him at my flat when I go to work, and it’s shocking how little has changed there. I guess there’s too much death around here for people to be affected by one more. A few people, though - the ones who actually know me - watch me a little closely, as if at any moment I might break down sobbing.

I try to look appropriately heartbroken. I try even harder not to think about how John must feel.

When I return home, Sherlock has somehow acquired a duffel bag full of clothes. Not his clothes, though, and he looks strange without them; in hoodies and sneakers he doesn’t seem quite as imposing, quite as otherworldly. I don’t mention the change, and neither does he.

I go to his funeral, and I don’t cry. At some point I catch eyes with his brother, and by his expression and the slight nod he gives me, I know that he knows. I leave soon after.

John didn’t attend.

Sherlock spends a lot of time pacing. He doesn’t say much, and I don’t make him; there’s a frustration to him that suggests it would be best to leave him be.

He acquires a gun, at some point. I see it stuffed into his duffel bag, and for the first time I wonder what he’s planning.

I still don’t ask him. I’m not entirely sure I want to know, and anyway, I can guess.

Then one afternoon, he’s missing for a few hours, and returns from god knows where with a hardness in his eyes that scares me. He vanishes into the bathroom for a few hours and when he emerges, he’s ginger; all his hair cropped off, his gorgeous curls probably somewhere in the trash. I hardly recognize him.

He vanishes sometime in the middle of the night, taking his duffel bag with him.

 

I don’t see Sherlock Holmes for three months.

 

When he comes back, he’s blonde, and has bruises darkening his face.

“I’m close, I can feel it,” he explains as I dab at his split lip.

“To ending it?” I ask, rinsing the cloth.

His brow furrows. “No,” he says. He doesn’t elaborate.

 

He falls asleep on my couch, the same as if he had never left. I watch him for a long moment, and then sigh and text another apology to my date.

He never texts me back, and Sherlock is gone in the morning.

 

Greg comes by, working a case. It’s nice to see him, even with a corpse between us.

He talks to me as he checks out the body. It’s a pleasant change. There’s not much conversation in a morgue, not even with live company. He tells me what he can about the case, and I’m so interested that I hardly notice it’s my lunch break.

“Mind if I eat?” I ask, digging my food out of my bag. “It’s sort of my lunch.”

He looks up from the body, surprised. “You can eat in here?”

I shrug, smiling a little awkwardly. “I work with bodies every day but weekends and holidays; if I wasn’t used to them by now, I’d be out of a job, wouldn’t I?”

He gestures for me to go ahead with a bemused expression. I wash my hands and then hop up to sit on the counter. He grins at that, and returns to explaining the bits of the case he can tell me. Apparently, it’s particularly difficult, and by the time he’s done he’s leaning on the counter next to me, picking from my food and demonstrating his frustration by gesticulating with a baby carrot.

“He could figure this out like it was nothing,” he complains, taking a bite. I look away. “Oh, god, sorry- Mols, I didn’t think-”

“It’s fine,” I interrupt him, because it is, and not just because Sherlock’s not dead, and not just because he’s not mine, but because he never really belonged to me anyway.

And because nobody calls me Mols anymore.

He stays through my lunch break, and when it’s over suggests that we meet up for “a proper lunch” later that week. We do. Twice. The next week, it’s three times.

After three weeks, I stop counting.

 

I run into John six months after Sherlock’s “death”, at the shops. I feel a little guilty for avoiding him, but to be honest, it’s not hard. Without Sherlock, there’s little to connect us anymore.

He certainly doesn’t come to Bart’s.

“Are you… I mean,” I hesitate, wondering if it’s all right to ask. “How are you doing, these days?”

His lips form a thin line. He leans a little more heavily on his cane and looks out the window.

“Good,” he says. “I’m good.”

I nod and don’t mention the dead man currently unconscious on my sofa.

Somehow I can’t help but think that in saving John, Sherlock broke them both.

 

“So you never…” Greg trails off.

“No,” I say quickly, turning my cup of coffee in my hands. “No, I didn’t… he never took any interest in me.” I sip my drink as Greg nods. “Well, you remember, he’s… he was always such a whirlwind, and me….” I shrug. “I’m just the girl with the bodies.” He raises his eyebrows, and I backtrack. “I mean, not like I gave him the bodies, I just meant…”

He’s laughing. My heart sinks.

He shakes his head. “Molly Hooper,” he chuckles, and the way he says it, my name sounds like it belongs to his voice. “You have the most interesting way of putting things, d’you know that?”

A smile spreads across my face without my permission, and I tuck my hair behind my ear for something to do. I glance down at my coffee. “Would you… like to have a drink sometime?” I ask.

He blinks, then grins.

 

“You have to warn me, when you’re going to show up,” I tell him, the next time I find him sitting on my couch. I’m leaning on the coffee table, and he’s cleaning a gun - a different one from the last, or the one before that. A red stain seeps through a bandage on his shoulder.

“Mm?” He inspects a piece for a moment, then replaces it on the table across from me.

“Sherlock,” I say. He glances up. “Really. Can you just… can you find a way to let me know? Please?”

He waves the hand holding the cloth, nodding, and goes back to his work.

Nothing changes.

 

When Greg asks me why I never bring him back to my flat. I tell him my flatmate is mad.

Close enough.

But after our last conversation, Sherlock vanishes. As in, properly vanishes. He’s not gone for a month, or two, or even three. He’s just gone.

At first when he doesn’t show up, I worry. When your mad, supposed-to-be-dead ex-crush shows up regularly covered in blood and bruises, and then doesn’t show up at all, well, it’s hard to avoid getting a little anxious. But as time goes on, I start to wonder if maybe this is his way of leaving me be.

Which is why, a year and a half after Sherlock’s “death”, and six months after Greg and I start dating, I tell him my mad flatmate moved out, and invite him to come home with me.

“So we’re standing in this dirty old building,” Greg is saying, half out of breath from laughter, “I’d only just met John, poor bastard, didn’t even know who he was, and Sherlock’s halfway down the stairs shouting “PINK!” like we’re supposed to know what on earth that’s supposed to mean!”

I’m giggling uncontrollably, which makes it a little difficult to get the key in the lock, and Greg goes on. “I mean, before you could so much as blink he was gone! It was just that fast! And John and I are standing there looking at each other-”

I get the door open, and he freezes. I look back at him in confusion.

“Molly, I need to use your…” a voice from within starts, and something in me sinks.

I turn to see Sherlock, paused in rifling through his now-worn duffel on the sofa, staring back at us.

“Lestrade,” he says, surprised and a little bit wary, and Greg clenches his jaw. He looks at me, and there’s a terrible betrayal in his eyes. 

“Greg,” I plead, reaching for him, but he shoves my hand away without a word. Then, with one last glance to Sherlock, he turns and walks away from us both.

I blink, and he’s gone. It’s just that fast.

I stand there, looking at the empty space left behind.

Behind me, Sherlock clears his throat. “I need-”

“Don’t you dare!” I shout, whirling. My hands are clenched, but shaking. “Don’t you  _dare_ tell me what you need of me, Sherlock Holmes, not now!”

His expression looks as if I’ve slapped him. “Molly, I-”

“No!” I say, and my eyes are watering now, my nails digging into my palms. “No, you don’t get to say a word, not after all this. For once I am going to talk and you are going to hear me, do you understand?”

Sherlock is silent. I take that as enthusiastic consent.

“I have done everything you have ever asked of me,” I swear, my voice shaking. “I have done everything you have ever asked of me and more, Sherlock; from the coffee to the morgue favors to faking your death and lying to everyone who’s ever loved you, I’ve done it, and I never asked for anything in return. But this,” and I have to force my words past my teeth, “this is too much.”

I glance away, blinking back tears. “The thing about you, Sherlock, is that you- you’re extraordinary.” I laugh, and it surprises me how caustic it sounds. “You really are; you’re _so_  extraordinary. You’re like… like a  _star_. And people like John, people like  _me_ , we look and we look until we’re stuck in your orbit, because we’ve got no  _choice_  but to keep looking, and you never, ever look back-” I choke off.

“Molly…” he whispers. I ignore him.

“And for a little while, that’s fine,” I continue, jerkily wiping away a tear, “because it’s enough to be standing in your light, but there comes a time when even little planets like me want to be looked at, and for once, for  _once_ , I had that, and  _he just walked out that door_!”

There’s a silence for a moment. Then: “Molly, I had no idea…”

“No, you wouldn’t, would you?” I angrily return, finally looking back at him. My lips taste of salt. “I just do what you need me to do; it doesn’t matter what I  _want_.”

He’s staring at me like he’s never seen me before.

“You can’t keep taking from me, Sherlock,” I say, my voice low. “And I can’t keep giving. I need something that’s mine, something that you can’t touch.”

Suddenly, I have to get out. I can’t stay in this room with everything I’ve just unloaded splayed out over the floor like a fresh corpse at his feet. I turn and head for the door.

“Molly,” he says again, and I stop, hand on the handle. But he doesn’t get a say this time.

So I glance over my shoulder, back to where he stands, unmoored, mouth half open with some response, and say, “My life doesn’t revolve around you, Sherlock Holmes. Not anymore.”

Then I leave, and don’t look back.

 

Greg won’t let me in.

I pound on his door for ages, calling his name, but either he’s ignoring me or he’s not there, and he won’t answer my messages. I end up slumped against the doorjamb and the door itself, crying weakly, for once not caring who can see.

I can’t bring myself to get up, and even if I could, there’s nowhere to go. Not back to my flat, not back to him. So I just stay there, curled up against Greg’s door, a mess of tears and mascara in a too-thin sweater.

I fall asleep there, somehow.

I have no idea how much later it is, but someone clears their throat and I blink awake. Greg stands there, watching me, and I push myself to my feet, suddenly aware of how ridiculous and desperate I probably seem.

There’s a moment where neither of us know what to do, and nothing happens.

I clear my throat. “I’m sorr-“

“Just… explain.”

There’s something weary in the set of these words, in the set of his shoulders against them, but it’s his eyes that look the most tired, and it’s his eyes I can’t look away from.

So I nod, and start talking. And everything’s okay.

 

Sherlock doesn’t come back.

 

I wake up, something like six months later, and squint at the clock in the near-darkness. 3:40 AM. I sigh, rubbing my eyes, and extricate myself from under Greg’s arm as gently as I can. He shifts a little, but doesn’t wake up, so I pull on a bathrobe and head for the kitchen to grab a glass of water.

There’s a figure, shadowed, standing by my window.

I should be afraid, but somehow I knew this was coming.

The figure clears his throat. “John’s married,” he says without turning, a sort of detachment in his voice.

I nod, folding my hands into the crooks of my arms. “I attended the ceremony. It was lovely.” I smile a little, apologetically. “You would have hated it.”

Sherlock doesn’t respond.

I exhale, and walk up to him. He’s thin - worryingly thin. He shivers in the gloom. I stand at his side, looking, as he does, out the window.

“You should stay,” I say. “At least the night.” He nods.

We stand there together until the horizon turns grey.

 

“How close are you?” I ask, warming my hands on a mug of coffee. “To going home?”

He stares down at his own mug, the steam curling in the air. “I’m not.”

 

Greg doesn’t talk to him, when he comes around. Not for a while, anyway.

It’s harder for him than it is for me, the knowing. He goes out with John for a pint sometimes. (He didn’t used to, but we don’t talk about that. Nobody wants to remember those months, right After.)

I ask him about John once, after one of those nights. “Is he happy?” I murmur, as we curl up in bed, Greg absently rubbing my shoulder with his thumb.

Greg hesitates for a moment, his thumb stilling. “Honestly?” he says, sounding troubled. “I don’t know.”

 

It takes two months for Greg to stop leaving whenever Sherlock turns up, and another week before he talks to him. Sherlock reads through some papers spread out over the coffee table, open duffle bag at his side. Greg studies him when he thinks Sherlock’s not noticing, although judging by the small smirk I catch on Sherlock’s face whenever Greg looks away, he’s not all that successful. Then Greg catches sight of the duffle bag, and his brow furrows.

“Are those guns?” he says, a touch incredulous.

Sherlock’s lips quirk upwards. “Yes,” he answers.

Greg’s eyebrows raise. His expression is one part exasperation, one part curiosity. “And let me guess,” he says dissaprovingly, “those have never been issued to anyone by the name of Holmes, have they?”

Sherlock pretends not to hear this.

“Sherlock,” Greg protests, but he gets no response. He shakes his head, getting up with a mutter of “like bloody always”, but something in his eyes gives away his amusement.

I catch him whistling later, and have to hide a little smile.

 

John’s wife passes away.

None of us really know what to do.

“Mary’s dead,” I tell Sherlock, the next time he arrives, bruised and battered and ginger again.

“Yes,” he reponds.

I look at him for a moment as he busies himself, dumping his duffel and digging out the box of first aid we now leave under the sofa for him. He doesn’t elaborate, and I sigh. “You should go to him.”

He stills, long fingers midway through searching for a plaster. “I can’t.”

“Sherlock,” I protest, folding my arms.

“I  _can’t_ ,” he insists, looking at me. “Not yet.” He goes back to digging through the box, and I move to sit down on the coffee table across from him. 

“He needs you, Sherlock,” I say quietly.

“No, he  _needs_  to stay alive,” he says, not taking his eyes from the box. “John’s strong, stronger than you lot; he’ll be fine without me.”

I shake my head, getting up. “I’m not so sure,” I say, heading into the kitchen.

I feel his eyes on me the whole way.

 

The next time Sherlock returns, his hair is dark again, and I know it’s almost time.

He thoroughly cleans and polishes each one of his guns before replacing them in the duffel, not saying a word. Greg watches him the whole time, and when Sherlock gets up, tugging the duffel with him, Greg stops him with a hand to his chest.

“Just- be careful,” he says gruffly. “ _Don’t_  go and get yourself killed this time, all right?”

Sherlock studies him for a moment, then nods. Greg drops his hand and steps aside, and Sherlock heads for the door. When he reaches me, he slows, stoops, and kisses my cheek.

“Thank you, Molly Hooper,” he murmurs.

My chest is tight, and I swallow, unable to respond. I turn to watch him as he walks past me, and, within moments, he’s gone.

I feel Greg’s hands on my shoulders and lean back into him, putting my right hand over his left.

“He’ll be fine,” he lies. I nod.

“Yeah,” I say, my eyes still on the door. “He’ll be fine.”

 

The next few weeks are worse than anything I’ve ever gone through.

There’s no way of knowing if he’s okay, and no way to find out if he’s otherwise. Greg and I spend a lot of nights sitting together, worrying, until one of us can’t stand the silence and turns on the telly.

Then, almost three years to the day Sherlock Holmes asked me to kill him, I’m working through my lunch break when the man himself walks through the door. He’s still too thin, and there are bruises still fading from his face, but he’s  _alive_ , and I drop my pen and stand as he holds open the door.

John strides in right behind him, and the two of them walk up to me, side by side.

Just the way it should be.

“Molly,” Sherlock says, genially. “I need a favor.”

I smile.


End file.
